A fellow student has a constant routine of falling asleep in class within 15 minutes of the lecture starting. I am starting to get really irritated because I think that it is disrespectful and disruptive to those of us trying to pay attention and understand the material.
My hypothesis to this scenario is that the student is not getting enough sleep at night and therefore is too tired during the day and easily falls asleep in a fitting environment. A classroom sometimes fits this description as it can be a quite room and often only one monotone voice is present.
A way of testing this hypothesis would be to ask the student to get 8 hours of sleep the night before the class. Obviously the student would have to be willing to participate and honest about whether or not they followed through with it. If the student participated and got the 8 hours of sleep as agreed upon and stayed awake through class that day, than the hypothesis would be supported. However, if the student were to still fall asleep, then the hypothesis would be falsified.
An untestable hypothesis to this scenario would be that the student's mother sang a song to him every day at the same time when he was a baby and young child so that he could fall asleep. The mid point of this particular class happens to fall right at this same time and sub-consciously the student still hears his mother's voice singing him to sleep unless he is doing something active enough that he is not affected by it.
I think the test you came up with were pretty good. =) Most people fall asleep because they are tired. I used lack of caffeine in my hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteI don't though agree with your untestable Hypothesis since it proves itself by the fact that his mother sang to him everyday, say the class was at 4pm (the time of his naps as a child). Maybe better if his mothers ghost sang to him every afternoon at the time of the class which made him fall asleep? =)
Thanks Christi for your input. Your right, that would have been better!
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